National School Lunch Act
The Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act (79 P.L. 396, 60 Stat. 230) is a 1946 United States federal law that created the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) to provide low-cost or free school lunch meals to qualified students through subsidies to schools.[1] The program was established as a way to prop up food prices by absorbing farm surpluses, while at the same time providing food to school-age children.[2] It was named after Richard Russell Jr., signed into law by President Harry S. Truman in 1946,[3] and entered the federal government into schools' dietary programs on June 4, 1946.[1]
The majority of the support provided to schools participating in the program comes in the form of a cash reimbursement for each meal served. Schools are also entitled to receive commodity foods and additional commodities as they are available from surplus agricultural stocks. The National School Lunch Program serves 30.5 million children each day for $8.7 billion for the fiscal year 2007. Most participants are also eligible for food during the summer through the Summer Food Service Program.
Early support[edit]
Early federal aid[edit]
As the scope of the meal supply expanded, local governments and school district boards could not provide the funds necessary to carry the increasing load. Supplementary contributions by charitable organizations and individuals did not suffice. Aid from Federal sources became inevitable. The earliest Federal aid came from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in 1932 and 1933 when it granted loans to several towns in southwestern Missouri to cover the cost of labor employed in preparing and serving school lunches. Such Federal assistance was expanded to other areas in 1933 and 1934 under the operations of the Civil Works Administration and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, reaching into 39 States and covering the employment of 7,442 women.[7]
Commodity Donation Program[edit]
The depression of the 1930s brought on widespread unemployment. Much of the production of the farm went begging for a market, surpluses of farm products continued to mount, and prices of farm products declined to a point where farm income provided only a meager subsistence. Millions of school children were unable to pay for their school lunches, and with but limited family resources to provide meals at home, the danger of malnutrition among children became a national concern.[7]
Public Law 320 passed by the 74th Congress and approved on August 24, 1936, made available to the Secretary of Agriculture an amount of money equal to 30 percent of the gross receipts from duties collected under the customs laws during each calendar year.[7]
Needy families and school lunch programs became constructive outlets for the commodities purchased by the USDA under the terms of such legislation. Many needy schoolchildren could not afford to pay for lunches and were sorely in need of supplementary foods from a nutritional standpoint. Thus they would be using foods at school which would not otherwise be purchased in the market place and farmers would be helped by obtaining an outlet for their products at a reasonable price. The purchase and distribution program was assigned in 1935 to the Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation which had been established in 1933 as the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation to distribute surplus pork, dairy products, and wheat to the needy. These funds came from customs duties and were specifically designated to encourage agricultural surplus consumption via exports and domestic donations. In March 1937, there were 3,839 schools receiving commodities for lunch programs serving 342,031 children daily. Two years later, the number of schools participating had grown to 14,075, and the number of children had risen to 892,259. From 1939 to 1942, the number of schools participating increased by 78,841, and the number of pupils participating increased by 5,272,540.[7]
In July 1943, in an attempt to salvage the deterioration of school lunches, Congress passed Public Law 129 to amend the Agricultural Adjustment Act Amendment of 1935. This law re-established school lunch programs using $60 million to cover the purchase of food, but not labor. The next year, Congress appropriated another $50 million and allowed child-care centers to participate.[7]
After Passage[edit]
Since the Act passed, Congress has modified several aspects of the policy. Congress amended the NSLP in 1962 to adjust fund distribution. They decided that the budget allocated to each state should be influenced by the state's need for further assistance. Rather than just factoring in the number of participants, Congress took into account the state poverty level compared to the national poverty level. Then, in 1968, Congress improved the NSLP food options to accommodate students with special dietary needs.[8]
Most recently, in 2012, First Lady Michelle Obama took on the issue of school lunches. Changes that she initiated primarily focused on more specific nutritional requirements. The changes include updated food group nutrition standards, such as vegetable subgroups, re-adjusted meat, and grain serving sizes to reflect different school grade ranges, an implemented requirement for whole grains, and milk-fat restrictions. Lower calorie ranges and a 10-year progressive sodium reduction plan also started in 2012.[9]
Food safety[edit]
In December 2009, a report was released that showed that fast food restaurants were far more rigorous in checking for bacteria and dangerous pathogens in beef and chicken than the school lunch program.[18]
A 2018 study by USDA and University of Connecticut researchers compared data from mandatory safety inspections for ground beef for the NSLP and separate data from random USDA inspections. The study found that the beef destined for the NSLP had fewer levels of test failures than beef for the market generally, although a study author noted that "ground beef that fails the National School Lunch Program’s inspection can be sold to other vendors and eventually make its way onto consumers' plates."[19] Between 2005 and 2014, there were no outbreaks of Salmonella and E. coli linked to beef provided to the NSLP, although there were dozens of such outbreaks in commercially sold ground beef over the same period.[19]
Participation rates[edit]
In 1967–68, the national enrollment in public and private schools was approximately 50.7 million, according to a survey of School Food Services in March 1968. About 36.8 million children, or 73 percent, were enrolled in schools participating in the National School Lunch Program with an actual average participation in the program of 18.9 million children, or about 37 percent of the national enrollment.[20]
Reasons for non-participation in the program were numerous but, in low-income areas and large urban centers, low participation was particularly evident. Many of the school buildings in these areas, as well as the small schools in rural areas, were built many years before there were plans for operating a school lunch program, and the buildings did not lend themselves to remodeling for that purpose - neither were local funds available for it. Many of the elementary school buildings in urban centers were built with the idea that the children could and should go home for lunch ("neighborhood schools") and lunchroom facilities were not available. Many of these conditions hold today.[20]
Some school authorities have held to the idea that a school lunch program must be self-supporting, and others have felt that the school has no responsibility in this area. In 1968, a group of women's civil rights and religious groups formed the Committee on School Lunch Participation to research and draw attention to the issue. Under their chair, Jean E. Fairfax, the group produced an influential report, Their Daily Bread. In this report, a junior high school principal remarked, "We think [school lunch] is the responsibility of parents and child. We do not check them to see if a student eats. As a whole, we are doing it as a service rather than a need."[21]
The net result is that the children in the neediest areas must go without an adequate noonday meal at school, or perhaps an inadequate evening meal at home, or none at all. Many high school students prefer to bring a bag lunch from home or eat snacks and beverages at a nearby stand or from a vending machine in the school. In some instances, the portions served to high school students are not adjusted to meet their needs and they seek other sources of service where their tastes and appetites can be satisfied.[20]
Native Americans and children of color[edit]
In December 2014, Indian Country Today reported that 68 percent of Native American and Alaska Native students "are eligible for free and reduced-price school lunches, compared with 28 percent of white students. USDA data indicate that 70 percent of children receiving free lunches through the NSLP are children of color, as are 50 percent of students receiving reduced-price lunches."[22] The article expressed concern regarding efforts to undercut nutrition standards and notes that several Native American schools are working to improve the quality of school lunches by using produce from school gardens, or tribally grown buffalo meat.[22]